Saim-Hann

Saim-Hann, the Wild Host, is an Aeldari craftworld — a void-going world-ship — whose warriors are famed for fast jetbike raiding. Xenos in allegiance and independent of any wider polity, it holds a reputation among other craftworlds ranging from admiration for its courage to unease at its wildness; some regard it as a nest of barbarians living at the edge of Aeldari society. Its name derives from the Aeldari word "saim", denoting both serpent and secret knowledge, and is commonly rendered as "Quest for Enlightenment". Its heraldry is the Cosmic Serpent, a creature of Aeldari myth said to exist in the material universe and in the warp at once, and its warriors favour red armour set off with black and white.

Saim-Hann has developed the Path of the Eldar — the Aeldari discipline of channelling personal roles and passions to guard against destructive excess — in a looser form than most craftworlds, allowing its people greater licence to indulge the wilder instincts of their ancestors, a practice other Aeldari regard as hazardous given its echo of the passions that caused the Fall of the Eldar. Almost the entire population, including its seers, belongs to a Wild Rider clan, an extended family that rides to war together on jetbikes and Vyper skimmers under a feudal hierarchy; a chieftain’s closest kin form the ruling Kinsmen, guarded by champions known as the Bloodguard. Clans choose individually whether to answer a call to war, and disputes between them are usually settled by ritual single combat rather than open conflict. Saim-Hann also maintains long-standing contact with the Exodites, Aeldari who settled maiden worlds beyond the craftworlds.

Saim-Hann is reckoned among the craftworlds that fled the Aeldari homeworlds earliest, before the Fall and the birth of Slaanesh, leaving it more isolated from its kin than most. In its early history it fought the so-called Craftwar against Craftworld Kaelor, after the two world-ships were set on a collision course within the webway; the conflict, remembered in Kaelor’s own poetry, was ended by the intervention of the Lhykosidae, a warp entity associated with the Warp Spiders, though Kaelor bore the greater cost and has never again risked the webway.

In later millennia, Saim-Hann’s Windrider clans campaigned for five years, from 487 to 492.M39, to destroy the Slaaneshi prince Lilesh Snarelust near the Moon of Nightmares, a pursuit ended when the rider Nuadhu killed the prince with the Celestial Lance. In the eighth century of M41, Exarch Triadhu Firesong warned the human Iron Blood tribes of Lelialthar, among whom the Black Templars recruited, to abandon the world; when they refused, a Saim-Hann warhost cleared it of human presence. In 786.M41, Autarch Eliac Zephyrblade led an invasion of the occupied maiden world of Gnosis Prime, crippling its industry before inviting Drukhari raiders to complete its scouring.

Since the opening of the Great Rift, Saim-Hann has fought on several fronts, sending five clans to hold the world of Upsilon against the Khornate Blood Crusade and engaging Imperial Navy and Chaos forces during Abaddon the Despoiler’s thirteenth Black Crusade. The Ynnari prophet Yvraine sought the craftworld’s support at its Speaking Palace, a council interrupted when Drukhari raiders led by Drazhar broke in through a forgotten webway portal in an attempt on her life, killing several Autarchs before Jain Zar’s intervention ended the raid. Saim-Hann also fought a war against Cadian Imperial Guard forces on Dellerax between 859 and 861.M41. The craftworld’s present station within the galaxy is not firmly recorded, consistent with the craftworlds’ nature as void-going world-ships.